Madame Cocoa (Alex Begley) undertook the mammoth but delicious task of creating this to scale model of Belfast City Hall. The project is in honour of her small business which is going from strength to strength alongside her fellow, local business buddy's Matthew who started up Campaign Social.
Unreal detail!
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The taxidermy lover in my life is me, so I was delighted with these anatomical prints from Ikkle Lovelies. Some of these would make beautiful tattoo designs too. I adore the snake. They are printed on pearlised, high quality card that has a beautiful sheen.
I simply bought four plain, black frames from my local Ikea, so they were framed for £20 in total. PS. We really need to paint our hall....
The Jar of Dreams is a nifty little web-app which monitors the temperature of the world's dream experience. It collects data from Twitter when dreams are mentioned, and weighs up what percentage have had happy dreams, and how many people have woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.
Designed by Time4Sleep, the Jar of Dreams makes for addictive clicking, and noshing into other people's dream states.
The Jar of Dreams is a complex piece using both front-end and server-side technology to produce the finished piece. A harvester script checks Twitter for tweets about dreams, both negative and positive, and stores them. A separate script builds this data into an easily-accessible JSON file.
The front-end work grabs these daily sets of Tweets, works out the percentage of good and bad Tweets, draws up the treemaps and puts the Tweets on the screen. It’s a fairly Javascript-heavy piece, but uses CSS animations where possible to reduce load and render times.
Why not give it a go?
They say you shouldn’t sweat the small stuff but, when it comes to fashion, I disagree.
As regular readers know, this blog is all about those little details that make a difference to your look.
This time, I’d like to pass on some tips for Christmas fashion as you get prepared for all those parties. A bit of thought can make all the difference to an outfit and let you shine like a star come the festive season – and here’s how.
Stunning headwear from Batcakes Couture (search on etsy)
One of Janine Basil's Christmas hair clips
How to wear accessories
When deciding on how to accessorise your look, model your outfit in front of the mirror and see where your eye is naturally drawn. Normally this is either towards the neck or the waist.
If it is towards the former, highlight the area with a necklace; if it’s the latter, accessorise with a carefully-chosen belt and select an understated piece of jewellery to wear around your neck.
The biggest mistake you can make is to wear a flamboyant necklace and belt as these will compete for attention. Your body frame is also important when it comes to accessories. If you are petite then keep to smaller scale items but if you’re tall then choose bolder designs which you can carry off with ease.
Don’t forget the handbag; an inspiring collection of funky and classic designs is available at MCM – the perfect way to accessories this season.
Festive make-up
Experimenting with make-up is one of the most fun parts of dressing up and Christmas is no exception. This is the perfect time of year to go glam with glitter - powdered glitter looks fantastic on eyelids and eyelashes so why not give it a go?
The trend this year is for metallic eyes. You can opt for a dramatic appearance à la Giorgio Armani with darker hues or choose lighter colours with a metallic sheen for an elegant touch.
Lips are simple; matte, dark berry colours are this year’s favourites – what are you waiting for?
This has been a snazzy guest post for Harrods.
Find Me a Gift score highly on the very cool gift rating once again with these Star Wars themed onesies. They sent me the Boba Fett onesie, as my husband is a mega-Star Wars fan and he's his favourite. It arrived the week I was in hospital, and my husband was sick too. He was so excited to receive it, he says it miraculously healed him*
*healing powers of onesies not proven by science
Its great quality, sweatshirt type material rather than a fleece that would end up bobbling. The Boba Fett design is £34.99, and if you have a few other gifts to buy for Christmas, and you spend over £50 you get a 20% discount.
Maybe Darth Vader is more your type of guy. The Darth Vader onesie is on offer at £29.99
The Storm Trooper onesie is also on offer at £29.99
I think my husband, who incidentally swore he would never wear a onesie, would happily wear any of these for sleepwear for ever more.
So don't rely on The Force to guide you to your Star Wars fan's last minute Christmas gift, let The World of Kitsch send you off happily to Find Me a Gift. Check out the other Star Wars merch they have there too.
Check your size
Heatons sent me this bauble-covered Christmas tree jumper to brighten my wardrobe this week. They've jumpers for all the family in store and online.
I don't often hold competitions on The World of Kitsch, but when the delicious people at Hotel Chocolat offered a prize for me to give away to my readers, I couldn't resist picking this HUGE chocolate wreath. I have one, worth £21, to giveaway to one of my readers.
I'm using Rafflecopter, which is the standard bloggers' giveaway tool. It's fair and randomly picks a winner for me. Hotel Chocolat will then send you the wreath directly, should you win.
Later in the week I will be reviewing their Christmas range they sent me to try. Oh my goodness, they are something else. The plastic bucket of Quality Street seems so inferior after you've had your taste buds introduced to Hotel Chocolat goodies.
Oh my. I wish I could enter my own giveaway
Check out these amazingly cool pony shaped Christmas wreaths my mother-in-law Audrey Smyth has been making them. You can get in touch with Audrey via her Facebook to order your own. Prices start at £15 and depend on size of the finished product.
As heard on BBC Radio 6's Lauren Laverne Show.
